In the full "gig" that GpG posted on youtube, he used the Astronomy from Kallispell because the start was better:
... plus the quality was a step up, also...
So... play this gig, appreciate how great it is, and what a wonderful performance it was, and how well George Geranios recorded it... and then
mourn for its fallen brothers...
The reason we have access to this is because it is one of the
few tapes that George
didn't turn over to Bolle... Bolle in turn sat on those tapes for many years and then - fairly recently - handed them all over to Mr S so that he could assess their "viability" for some possible future commercial usage... that assessment was that they were "not deemed worthy" of any further action so now they probably sit on a shelf somewhere in a box gathering dust...
If George still would have had them in his possession, he'd have digitally "cleaned" them up and put them on youtube for the fans to enjoy. He understands how we feel about these recordings and realises that people have to be able to hear this stuff. He
gets it!!
However, the very act of turning the tapes over now seems to have killed the possibility of us
ever getting to hear any of this doubtless wonderful material, and I'm going to argue that this is a lamentably
poor decision which represents a terrible missed opportunity and demonstrates a lack of vision.
It's an incontrovertible truth that a band
needs a hard-headed, pragmatic businessman in charge of their affairs - music is a business, after all - but that's not
all it is. It's also a cultural, artistic endeavour with many strands to its bow and not
all aspects of it can be reduced to lines in a spreadsheet...
It's also about a relationship - the aforementioned "hard-headed, pragmatic businessman" would have it that it's between the producer and the consumer, whereas we all see it as between the artist and the fanbase.
With a band, there are obviously business decisions to be made but there are
also artistic decisions to be taken also - and regarding the latter, so far as BOC is concerned, I think the tally for missed opportunities is steadily increasing. I think BOC need what is often colloquially referred to as a "fan on the board" to advise on the view from the
other side of the tracks...
The crackdown on dimeadozen and youtube has been a massive own goal - I can't even
begin to quantify the damage that this has done to the good name of BOC amongst many fans but it's
not too late to try and claw back the moral high ground.
If all these George Geranios-mixed soundboard tapes are not worthy of any sort of official release, then turn them over to the fans - don't just sit on them and do nothing with them - create an official BOC youtube channel or something - it'd be good PR, and you could make a "thing" about it - release one per month or something and promote the countdown to the next release etc. Build up a momentum to the this new BOC record that's reportedly in the works...
Or, if that's too much on the "red" side of the ledger ("red and black - it's the accountant's colour scheme"), then make them available as paid downloads - no, it
won't buy everyone a Ferrari but over the course of time it
will pay some utility bills...
But whichever approach is taken, stuff like the above gig brings into sharp relief the belief of all fans that it is well past the time to
finally release the red box. Time's passing, and none of us are getting any younger.
www.pressofatlanticcity.com/obituaries/simmerman-scott-michael/article_8f20d7ce-9170-510e-b946-84e197401cbe.html